Chapter 132 - Burn, Soul of Cheering!
Akihabara UDX. The venue was packed wall to wall. Otaku sweat, feverish hormones, and cheap perfume had fused into something that genuinely resembled a hazardous aura, the kind that would make a Cursed Spirit back away three steps on principle.
"Listen up! Yuji! Yu Haibara! And Teacher!"
Aoi Todo wore a pink cheering shirt emblazoned with a massive print of Takada-chan's face. A headband reading "VICTORY" sat tight around his forehead. His expression was grave, ceremonial. A general on the eve of a banzai charge.
He turned and fixed his gaze on the Youthful Quartet.
"The handshake event is a battlefield. Ten seconds, ten seconds that decide life and death. You will pour the passion of your souls, the sweat of your youth, the pump of your muscles — every last drop, into that single exchange!"
Yuji Itadori held up a flyer and nodded with complete seriousness. "Got it. Communicate with the soul."
Yu Haibara smiled politely beside him, looking a little like a man trying to find his footing on a moving boat. "Uh... I'll give it my best, Todo-kun."
And standing at the center of the three, silent as a mountain range, radiating a presence that made the air feel heavier, was Toji Fushiguro. He had the signature green Jumpsuit of Youth on. Arms crossed over his chest. He listened, then gave one slow nod, something deep and genuine settling in his eyes.
"Well said, Aoi!"
Toji's voice hit like a struck bell. Two bespectacled otaku nearby actually wobbled.
"The sweat an idol pours out on that stage and the sweat we shed on the training ground, at their core, they are the same thing. Both are proof that youth is still burning. Today, we answer that radiant youth with the hottest will we've got!"
The people queued around them stared over with expressions ranging from alarmed to deeply concerned. Are these muscle guys here to shake someone down? The line inched forward like an overfed caterpillar. Then, finally, it was their turn.
"Next!" A staff member raised a stopwatch and called out.
Aoi Todo drew a long breath. He stepped up hard. Takada-chan was seated behind the long table in a pink stage outfit, smile warm and practiced. She extended both hands. Todo's legs exploded apart. He dropped into a picture-perfect sumo stance right in front of the table, textbook depth, weight centered, not a millimeter off.
Every muscle locked at once. The veins in his neck stood out like cables. A faint green haze seemed to be building pressure just beneath the surface of his skin.
"Takada-chan!"
Todo's voice detonated through the hall. The chandeliers shuddered.
"Your smile is the fuel that sets my youth ablaze! To stand before you today, I completed ten thousand weighted squats before dawn!"
Takada-chan's smile locked in place. Her hands hung suspended in midair. Her pupils had gone very still. She was clearly trying to process what species of creature had just appeared in front of her.
"S-Security..." The nearest staff member stumbled back a full step, hand flying instinctively to the walkie-talkie at his hip.
"Time's up! Please move along!" Two broad-shouldered security guards came in fast, one on each side, and hauled Aoi Todo physically toward the exit.
"Remember, squats are the way! Takada-chan, don't neglect your glutes!" he bellowed as they dragged him, craning his neck back, voice going hoarse.
"Um. Next." The staff member wiped the sweat off his brow.
Yuji Itadori stepped up. He took Takada-chan's hand with the relaxed confidence of a man who had no complicated feelings about anything. He flashed a wide, guileless grin, the grin of someone who had never experienced social anxiety in his life.
"Okay so, honestly? I'm more of a Jennifer Lawrence guy. But Todo says you're amazing, so keep it up!"
Takada-chan blinked. Nobody had ever name-dropped another celebrity at her own signing event. Then she looked at his eyes. Completely clear. No filter, no agenda, not a trace of anything beyond exactly what he'd just said. She laughed, genuinely, before she could stop herself.
"Thank you. You're incredibly honest." She smiled. "Tell that fan from earlier I'll work hard on my training."
Yuji sailed through without a scratch. Yu Haibara was next. He greeted her politely, said something encouraging, kept it brief. Nothing caught fire. Everything was fine. Then it was Toji Fushiguro's turn.
He walked to the table one step at a time. The walk alone did something to the air around him. His height cleared 190 cm easy, and the muscle packed onto his frame wasn't for show, it was the kind that had been built against real resistance, real stakes. Both security guards felt themselves straighten up without deciding to.
Takada-chan's professional smile held, if a little stiffly. She extended her hand.
"Hello..."
Toji didn't take it. He looked at her. Not at the stage outfit or the practiced smile. He looked at her the way someone looks when they've seen enough of the world to know what actually costs something, with eyes that had stared down death more times than she'd performed, deep and still as water at the bottom of an old well.
"In your eyes," he said, his voice dropping low, unhurried, carrying its own gravity, "I can see a devotion to your dream that doesn't lose to anyone."
A beat.
"The sweat you leave on that stage doesn't lie. Keep burning, girl. Your youth has barely started."
There was no flattery in it. No calculation. Every word landed like it meant exactly what it said. Takada-chan went still. She looked at this strangely dressed man with the utterly unguarded eyes, and without quite deciding to, her gaze drifted to the faint scar at the corner of his mouth.
It didn't break his face. If anything, it sharpened it, cut right through handsome and landed somewhere more unsettling, more magnetic. Color rose in her cheeks before she could do anything about it.
"Th, thank you..." She tripped on the words slightly. "That scar... by your mouth. It's, it's very manly."
The entire venue went quiet. The security guards who'd been bracing to pull Toji away froze mid-step. And Aoi Todo, who had been dragged to the side and was in the middle of slowly, carefully working his way back, looked as though a bolt of lightning had entered through the top of his skull.
He had watched, with his own two eyes, as the goddess of his heart turned a soft, maiden's blush toward his teacher. Called him manly. Jealousy. Awe. A grief he couldn't name.
The feelings crashed into each other in his chest like tectonic plates, and what they produced wasn't heat, it was magma. It tore up through his throat and came out as a sound that could only be described as the wail of a man whose world had just rearranged itself.
"TEACHER!"
Aoi Todo's eyes had gone red, tears running openly down his face. He pointed at his own cheek and aimed the full force of his voice at Toji like a weapon.
"Give me one too, cut me right here, I want the scar that proves a man's glory too!"
The venue collapsed into chaos.
---
Half an hour later, the four of them had been escorted, firmly, with no room for negotiation, out of the building. They walked the streets of Akihabara.
"Master, that was incredible." Yuji was still glowing, replaying it all in his head. "You moved an actual idol with your will of youth."
"Obviously." Toji folded his arms. He did not look surprised.
Aoi Todo drifted along beside them, still not quite back from wherever the experience had sent him, grinning vacantly one moment, leaking tears the next, mumbling something under his breath on a loop. Yu Haibara followed behind, resigned to it. He was quietly deciding that this had been, without any competition, the most exhausting team activity in recorded history. Then the phone in Toji Fushiguro's pocket buzzed.
Not a ringtone. The specific frequency Tokyo Jujutsu High used only for Special Grade emergencies. A sound that was designed to cut through everything else. The easy look on Toji's face was gone in an instant. What replaced it was something colder, cleaner, the stillness that belonged to the Heavenly Restriction Tyrant. He pulled out the phone and answered.
"It's me."
The voice on the other end was Satoru Gojo's.
"Toji. Bring Yuji back to Jujutsu High. Now. Something's happened."
"What?"
"Thirty minutes ago. Near Yasohachi Bridge in Saitama Prefecture. Mass casualties."
A pause.
"The stolen Cursed Womb: Death Paintings have incarnated."
➤ Next: Speed-Clear Special Grade! The Curtain Falls!